


All You Think You See (Are Two Guys in a Cemetery)

by Brosedshield



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Gen, Season/Series 05, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:51:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The weedy little Lawrence, Kansas cemetery didn’t look like the kick-off line for the Apocalypse, but Lucifer and Michael showed up right on time in the denim and Winchester dress code.</p>
<p>(thoughts on Swan Song, conveyed through Lucifer POV, authorial mutterings at the end notes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All You Think You See (Are Two Guys in a Cemetery)

The weedy little Lawrence, Kansas cemetery didn’t look like the kick-off line for the Apocalypse, but Lucifer and Michael showed up right on time in the denim and Winchester dress code.

Lucifer had briefly considered stopping for a Sam-sized white suit—formal dress for his meat suit, just to emphasize the difference in class between himself and Michael —but between slaughtering five or six of Sam’s childhood associates to test his control over Sam’s body and soul (listening all the while the boy writhed in futile despair, a small pleasure before the great battle) there hadn’t been sufficient time to stop at a decent tailor’s for what was, essentially, a petty (if pretty) symbol of their differences.

Another petty difference (and one that Lucifer greatly enjoyed) was the height disparity between Sam and Adam. Granted, that small pleasure was almost overwhelmed by the charge from finally meeting Michael again, from the distant impact of Sam throwing himself against the cage of Lucifer’s consciousness, but he still enjoyed looking so far down on his big brother.

Angels didn’t exactly have height, more like _presences_. And big brother Michael’s presence had always been a shade greater than Lucifer’s, even when they two —plus Gabriel—had been like white phosphorus flares against everyone else’s tea-lights.

Sam probably didn’t appreciate the sensation. He’d been taller than Dean since high school, taller in this way at least than the rest of of the world, but Lucifer could savor it anew. Last time he had been face to face with Michael, millennia ago, had been the hour his brother made it clear he would stand with the human filth. The hour he proved beyond shadow of a doubt that he loved their absent, deluded, obsessed Father more than his little brother. Hadn’t Lucifer only hated the humans because his adored Father loved them so much more than he had ever loved his first-created angels? Hadn’t he made the demons—tortured, filthy little stains on existence, carved from the flesh of the very human his father had loved so much more—to show that he could twist even his father’s work to suit a more appropriate purpose. That he, more than every other angel, could _defy._

And damned, he had defied, which had brought them here. No tea-light angels or demons in this place, in this moment as two brothers confronted each other again. Both sides had fought for this battle, prepared the ground with blood, blackmailed and tormented the hosts so that Michael and Lucifer could meet in this particular weedy little graveyard to kick-start the chain reaction of slaughter and glorious battle that would utterly crush the dominance the humans claimed over this gorgeous world.

But not a celestial or demonic being had the balls to intrude on this moment. Because, no matter how much the angels might imagine this was the end of their long, thankless stewardship; and the demons—stupid, expendable mockeries of the filthy swine—thought he would give them this world and an end to the eternal Hell he had created for them, in truth, this moment was about family. The pain of someone you trusted to watch your back and guard your sleep stabbing you in the wing and casting you down into nightmares.

This was about brothers.

To the casual observer, it wouldn’t look like much. Just two angry men in matching denim jackets, pacing a slow, connected circle around a weedy little graveyard in the ass end of nowhere. Even their dialogue wasn’t that interesting, just two damaged people saying things that they had rehearsed to themselves a hundred times. Even through hatred and well-honed grudges, the words had to be said. They had to give each other the chance that neither believed would be taken.

After millennia apart, Lucifer knew Michael wasn’t coming back for him. Hell, _Castiel_ had been able to drag Dean out of the pit. Just once, Michael could have tried to breach the Cage. Not that he would have gone. Hell, after all, was a choice, the price of walking away from their Father, the bastard who had always made the choices too hard, the sacrifices worth the gain. Of all the things Lucifer was proud of making, it was Hell. Pure betrayal, a shot of rage, and a heavy dose of pain had made a heavy infusion that had done such delightful things to his followers, human and angel alike.

Lucifer and Michael stared at each other in their matching bodies, not a single soul or presence in human sight. They paced, and they were, on one level, two men in matching clothing staring each other down. They looked inches from a drunken fistfight or a general brawl. But beyond the surface, beyond the reality that the human mind could conceive, Lucifer and Michael were so much more. They were angelic, fallen and fearsome, vaulting their wings over the rich glowing earth where the dead rested without peace, twitching in their graves. In the distance, watching, like a rabid crowd in a football stadium, the hosts of Heaven waited, fiery swords (no slim silver blades in this sight, but true swords like had leveled Sodom and Gomorrah and taken the lives of every firstborn in Egypt), while the hordes of Hell, breathing labored in their human hosts, readied their cheap, infernal weapons and put their faith in their champion, their master, their fallen Father. 

Lawrence, Kansas may have seemed abandoned, lacking either black-eyed henchmen in cheap suits, or grey suited figures bearing silver sticks. No one would be stupid enough to ride into the heart of that moment, the calm before the hurricane hit, the stillness between pre-shocks and 9.3 on the Richter scale. No, the backup team for Michael and Lucifer waited in the wings, states away, watching as the power built that would blow the roof off this popsicle stand.

Where “popsicle stand” is defined as a hundred thousand years of human existence.

Where “blow the roof off” means _finally, we will be free, free at last from every burden, even if we are so destroyed that Death himself is buried in the rubble._

That was the plan, and it was such a bad plan that everyone had rather begun to like it, because when there were no other options, it was kind of nice to go down swinging. Free will had fallen by the wayside the day one brother told another to go to Hell, and at this point not a soul was stupid enough to walk into that, to spit on Lucifer and Michael together in the hour they had come at last to kill each other. No one would volunteer to be the first to die when Fate and God, hosts and hordes, were pushing united in that one direction.

They were two celestial beings, wings half-spread through a dozen dimensions, their flaming swords hovering on the edge of the worlds, their power so awesome that if there had been a witness to their true, white phosphorus forms at that moment the unlucky soul would not have stuck around to listen to the “Do not be afraid, vermin, I’ll make it quick,” but would run for all they were worth. Lucifer and Michael were world-makers, servant and ex-servant of the God Most High. Nothing could stop them; nothing would even try because nothing but a hero with a death wish (or a conviction) would confront the sheer, burning, unflinching, unforgiving power within them, even temporarily contained as it was by two guys in a cemetery.

That’s what they thought.

And then they heard the Impala.

**Author's Note:**

> So, the rough draft of this fic I wrote way back...the night of Swan Song? While the benefit of distance has made me really appreciate the end of S5 and how pretty pretty the character arcs ended up, I may have been...upset? Angry? Frothing with rage? You know. At the end. So I wrote this, which treads the line between grumbling and headcanon. I firmly believe there was a lot of awesome angel and ultimate power stuff going on in Swan Song that we couldn't see because as mere mortals we don't have the mental or spiritual ability to see it and therefore it wasn't even slightly addressed in the actual episode.
> 
> No, shut up, this thought makes me happy so I'm sticking to it and it shall be my headcanon and it shall be pretty forever, just so! *grin*
> 
> Also, it's taken me three years to actually post this because Lavinia said "There should be more to this story, Brose!" and I agreed. But apparently the rest of my brain disagrees. SO, if this story gets a second chapter some day don't say I didn't warn you. But, also, don't count on it, because it's taken three years already...


End file.
